Cerulean

Is there too much of a good thing going on in Los Angeles right now? Considering how instrumental Flying Lotus has been in building a scene of likeminded beatmakers, it was a bit jarring when he admitted to Pitchfork that "a lot of halfway kids, come out here, kids who started making beats six months ago, thinking they can get on stage because their drums are off." It's possible that sort of people he might be talking about would share a similar profile to Will Wiesenfeld: 21 years old, hailing from a sleepy, suburban outpost like Chatsworth, and employing non-quantized drumbeats to... gah, make love songs. But Wiesenfeld's C.V. checks out: despite his age, he's a veteran, previously working in the classically-informed but unclassifiable [Post-Foetus] before being invited by Daedalus to open for a Destroy L.A. show featuring FlyLo and Nosaj Thing. It was there that Baths was born, and with Cerulean, he places himself as something of the pop voice that the L.A. beathead scene never realized it needed.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010

Just as London continues to lead the way in dubstep, or Brooklyn seems to spawn indie buzz band after indie buzz band, so Los Angeles can be considered the home of beats. While hip hop’s presence along the West Coast has long been celebrated, recently a new generation of beatmakers has been spawned, offering refreshing and original production. Almost all corners of the musical landscape have been covered; whether it is the diverse sonic adventures of Madlib, the acid psychadelia embraced by The Gaslamp Killer, or even the jazzy space opera found on Flying Lotus’ latest opus.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010

Hip-hop has fallen from its past glory as a force of cultural innovation. Everyone from multinational corporations and European DJs used to take stylistic cues from trendsetting rap producers and MCs with elaborate, self-written mythologies and larger-than-life personalities. These days, it seems that this influence is turning itself inside-out; modern rappers derive their production style from European DJs, and most big-budget advertisers are more likely to appropriate vintage or indie fetishes than rap's current fascination with disposable mixtapes and swag. And as the old force of innovation collapses on itself, one could be forgiven for thinking that intersections of styles are themselves the stage on which advertisers and would-be celebrities perform other dramas — dramas that have more to do with ambition than relationships, more to do with commerce than culture.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010

Baths - or Will Wiesenfeld in some circles - certainly has the credibility: emerging from Los Angeles' ever-expanding beat scene, he's the latest in a line of artists to combine the tenets of shoegazing with the broad principles of electronica, the result being a relatively new creature entitled glo-fi.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010